Josh Byrnes has a strong stomach and a growing appetite. The Padres general manager once swallowed $22 million in a single gulp, so he’s not afraid of acidic aftertaste as he contemplates eating some costly contracts.

If Byrnes decides to release the dyspeptic duo of Jason Bartlett and Orlando Hudson, at a combined cost of roughly $10.5 million in guaranteed salary, this is a pittance compared with what Byrnes once paid Russ Ortiz to disappear from the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The moral of that story is you don’t correct mistakes by compounding them. You have to know when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em, when to walk away and when to break it to the boss that it’s time to cut bait when he’s on the hook for more than eight digits of dead money.

“I don’t know if there’s a formula,” Byrnes said Tuesday. “But I think you get to a point where you say, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”

If that point has not yet arrived for the 2012 Padres, it is probably imminent. Despite Tuesday’s trampling of Stephen Strasburg in Washington, the Home Team owns the worst record in the National League and a double-play combination that appears to be aging in dog years.

Second baseman Orlando Hudson, 34, is hitting a Nerf-soft .210 and covering considerably less ground than he did during his rangy Gold Glove years. Shortstop Jason Bartlett, 32, is 1-for-May, his batting average an eyesore .133, and he has amassed more errors (5) than runs batted in (4).

Both players are former All-Stars. Neither deserves to be a designated scapegoat for a team long on shortcomings. Yet a lame-duck veteran on a last-place team is more often in the way than in the plans. If these Padres are doomed to be lousy, they should at least make it a learning experience for younger players.

Better to endure the growing pains of a prospect than to prolong the inevitable with a declining veteran. Better to take your medicine in a single dose than to contend with a chronic ailment over a matter of months.

You don’t want to be rash, but you need to be real.

“When a guy’s not performing, there’s a frustration level,” Byrnes said. “It’s easy to get caught up in the mob mentality that these guys are the scapegoats. (But) Once you do that, there’s no going back. …

“You want to make decisions that will make you better.”

There’s a danger, though, in acting too hastily, in concluding a player is finished when he’s only hurt or his timing is off. Four years ago, the Padres released Jim Edmonds and his .178 batting average in early May, still owing him more than $4 million, only to see Edmonds resurface with the Chicago Cubs and finish the season with 20 home runs.

Still, it’s easy to go broke trying to double down on bad deals. When Byrnes released Russ Ortiz in 2006, former Blue Jays executive Keith Law wrote a guest column for ESPN arguing that the player’s contract was a “sunk cost,” and therefore irrelevant to real-time decisions.

“The decision of whether or not to use the player or product or service is independent of the money committed, because it’s already spent,” Law wrote. “You often see the misunderstanding of sunk costs from people who sign a multiyear contract to use a fitness club, then drag themselves to the gym because they’re spending the money anyway — when the truth is that the money is gone even if they never set foot on a treadmill. The go/no-go decision should have nothing to do with the expense.”

In theory, Law is clearly correct. In practice, baseball executives are not always quick to admit their errors. Not all of them have the job security to act out of conviction rather than self-preservation. And some of them are just plain stubborn.

“Original errors often are compounded when teams are unwilling to acknowledge their initial mistakes by releasing the players in question,” Law wrote. “Roughly one-third of all major league teams have players for the sole reason that they make ‘too much’ money to be released. And that is just plain stupid; there is no greater fool’s errand in baseball than waiting for a player who was never that good in the first place to suddenly earn his pay.”

This is one mistake Josh Byrnes has been able to avoid. During his tenure in Arizona, he twice released players who were owed more than $10 million. Though that’s not necessarily a recommendation, it is revealing.

Better to cut your losses than to be reminded of them on a daily basis.